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You're not trying to argue that random selection for a benefit is unfair, compared to selecting for people who are willing to pay? About appointments, there co

You're not trying to argue that random selection for a benefit is unfair, compared to selecting for people who are willing to pay? About appointments, there could be a very simple website where you punch in your license plate, hit Enter, and see a calendar with all your days highlighted, for the next 6 to 12 months. There could be some flexibility in the system. Everyone gets a small number of tokens (which expire: must be used in a year or something) that provide a free pass on any day whatsoever. You use those for those situations like getting a sudden appointment that couldn't be planned around the regular system (e.g. someone canceled and you were next on the waitlist, and the time is the time). The token system could be automatic in fact. You just drive to the city on an off day when you aren't supposed to, and your "ding count" increments by one. On the same website where you punch in your plate number to get a schedule, you can see the number of dings against your license plate. (The system wouldn't have to track all license; just ones that triggered a ding.) (Not sure about the privacy implications. Someone who enters your plate number and sees a ding count knows that your car has been to the city sometime in the past few months on an unassigned day. If that's something you need to hide from someone, then maybe just don't go by car on those days.)

toss1 1y ago
I agree adding exemption tokens or 'ding count' is a good idea. But YES, I am arguing: 1) random selection creates both substantial unfairness and cost on people who through no fault of their own have schedule issues, when compared to a modest congestion toll, 2) random selection creates widespread inconvenience for everyone especially when changes are made to 'tune' the amount of traffic; everyone needs to check if the new lottery numbers match their plates, vs just increasing prices at specific which will at most cost someone a few dollars extra if they don't check in advance, instead of a costly ticket 3) The lottery system would not help anyone who wants to commute in everyday, since they would be banned on whatever days they are banned. In contrast, the cost system is trivial for one-off trips, but a significant cumulative cost to people who want to use cars in the congested zone every day. The one-off trips are not the problem, the GOAL is to reduce habitual trips. The toll system addresses that most specifically and gives no advantage to two-car households, whereas a lottery is basically a free pass to two-car households to continue congesting. Having a lottery system with ~4 free passes per month may solve some of these, but at the cost of a lot of additional tracking and overhead. Still thinking basic economics is a good solution here. More ideal in some ways would be a sliding per-visit scale (e.g., scaling by some exponent per visit per month...), but again likely not worth the overhead.
- kazinator 1y ago
  This overhead is relative to doing nothing, or relative to imposing tolls? Does not the congestion pricing setup in N.Y. rely on license plate cameras? Under the lottery model, the same cameras are used. When a license is scanned which is permitted on that day, no further tracking is required. The event contributes to statistics, but otherwise can be dropped. When a license is scanned which is not permitted that day, it added to a local database with a count of 1, or else has its count incremented if already recorded. Further processing deeper in the system is only applied to licenses which are over a threshold. The counts are periodically aged down, and records which hit zero are deleted.
  - toss1 1y ago
    Of course everything can be computed. I'm talking more of the overhead for every single person who might want to come into the city on a given day — they will need to check and work their schedules around 1) being sure to check the current permitted/denied license plate character pattern and 2) work their schedules around that. As we've already seen, we already need substantial work-arounds for critical can't move medical appointments. Events can be even worse; working in a business displaying at the biggest trade show for their industry all year, they've got to come in all four days, using their personal cars. Oops, nope, banned two of those days... etc. It is bullshit. Whereas with congestion tolls, it's just a trivial expense part of doing the show. We can think of thousands of such examples where a toll is simply a trivial inconvenience whereas a traffic violation is not. Of course, for each one, we can find a work-around ("just add another layer of indirection...."). And each one of those work-arounds adds to the workload of everyone who might come into the zone. In contrast, the congestion toll workload is always simple: "Is it worth the extra $X to go in during the busy time, or can I go in a different time?" And, traffic violations — especially accumulating traffic violations — are a LOT worse for low-income people, as the consequences tend to compound. You are definitely convincing me even more strongly that congestion tolls are the better idea and lotteries are both far more inconvenient and more unfair.
    - kazinator 1y ago

toss1 1y ago

I agree adding exemption tokens or 'ding count' is a good idea. But YES, I am arguing: 1) random selection creates both substantial unfairness and cost on people who through no fault of their own have schedule issues, when compared to a modest congestion toll, 2) random selection creates widespread inconvenience for everyone especially when changes are made to 'tune' the amount of traffic; everyone needs to check if the new lottery numbers match their plates, vs just increasing prices at specific which will at most cost someone a few dollars extra if they don't check in advance, instead of a costly ticket 3) The lottery system would not help anyone who wants to commute in everyday, since they would be banned on whatever days they are banned. In contrast, the cost system is trivial for one-off trips, but a significant cumulative cost to people who want to use cars in the congested zone every day. The one-off trips are not the problem, the GOAL is to reduce habitual trips. The toll system addresses that most specifically and gives no advantage to two-car households, whereas a lottery is basically a free pass to two-car households to continue congesting. Having a lottery system with ~4 free passes per month may solve some of these, but at the cost of a lot of additional tracking and overhead. Still thinking basic economics is a good solution here. More ideal in some ways would be a sliding per-visit scale (e.g., scaling by some exponent per visit per month...), but again likely not worth the overhead.

kazinator 1y ago
This overhead is relative to doing nothing, or relative to imposing tolls? Does not the congestion pricing setup in N.Y. rely on license plate cameras? Under the lottery model, the same cameras are used. When a license is scanned which is permitted on that day, no further tracking is required. The event contributes to statistics, but otherwise can be dropped. When a license is scanned which is not permitted that day, it added to a local database with a count of 1, or else has its count incremented if already recorded. Further processing deeper in the system is only applied to licenses which are over a threshold. The counts are periodically aged down, and records which hit zero are deleted.
- toss1 1y ago
  Of course everything can be computed. I'm talking more of the overhead for every single person who might want to come into the city on a given day — they will need to check and work their schedules around 1) being sure to check the current permitted/denied license plate character pattern and 2) work their schedules around that. As we've already seen, we already need substantial work-arounds for critical can't move medical appointments. Events can be even worse; working in a business displaying at the biggest trade show for their industry all year, they've got to come in all four days, using their personal cars. Oops, nope, banned two of those days... etc. It is bullshit. Whereas with congestion tolls, it's just a trivial expense part of doing the show. We can think of thousands of such examples where a toll is simply a trivial inconvenience whereas a traffic violation is not. Of course, for each one, we can find a work-around ("just add another layer of indirection...."). And each one of those work-arounds adds to the workload of everyone who might come into the zone. In contrast, the congestion toll workload is always simple: "Is it worth the extra $X to go in during the busy time, or can I go in a different time?" And, traffic violations — especially accumulating traffic violations — are a LOT worse for low-income people, as the consequences tend to compound. You are definitely convincing me even more strongly that congestion tolls are the better idea and lotteries are both far more inconvenient and more unfair.
  - kazinator 1y ago